Critical Exponent

We still have twenty minutes to go. That should be enough time for the sun to go down behind the trees and allow me to look at the stage without squinting. I lie back in my rented picnic chair and grab another cracker. I meticulously spread the goat cheese, and then put the last of the smoked salmon on top. I savor this delicacy; smoked salmon and cheese on crackers are synonymous with a picnic.

“What did you think of the smoked tuna?” I ask Bill. He doesn’t like it. Too gummy, he says. I have to agree. It was worth a shot but I’m not buying that again.

I wipe my hands on the already wet napkin. I should have brought more paper towels; it annoys me to run out of napkins. I look around at all the people. Most are picnicking like us, a few are reading, some are sleeping. The volunteers in their bright green T-shirts are making their way haphazardly through the crowd, some handing out programs, some requesting donations. It’s a great thing, this Shakespeare in the Park. I’m glad Bill and I are attending again. I remember last year, we saw MacBeth. Oh no, he says, handing me the program. MacBeth was three years ago, see right here?

Good grief, he’s right! How can that be? It feels like only last year! Is this what getting old feels like, I wonder. All those memories are just compressed, they are so vivid and immediate. I reach down and grab a Roma tomato. I pop it into my mouth.

Oh, my God! I can’t believe this. The tomato just spurted three feet in front of me. On the woman seated in front. Oh, no, she’s got tomato pulp and seeds on her arm. Did she notice? Crap! There’s some on her lap. She’s turning around. I can’t believe this. “Excuse me! I am so sorry!” This can’t be happening. It’s alright, she assures me. Oh that’s so polite. I would be pissed. Maybe she’s pissed. Her dad is seated next to her. Is he going to get mad? No, he doesn’t react much.

I should help her clean up. A napkin. Where’s the napkin? Oh here it is—the used, wet napkin. I offer it feebly. It’s all I have, I say. She takes it and dabs her lap. And she’s got some tomato pulp on her arm and back. Should I pretend it’s not there? She can’t see it. No, it’s too embarrassing. People behind me can see it. Oh, the people behind me! Are they laughing at me? How could they not be? No, no laughter. Maybe no one noticed? No, can’t be. They’re all being more polite than I would be. Note to self: don’t laugh at the misfortune of others.

But the stuff is still on her. She turns back and hands me back the limp scrap of a napkin. “Here, you’ve got some on your back.” I reach over and dab her arm, and the back of her tank top. Oh, my God, what am I doing. I’m pawing a woman, a young girl I don’t even know. It’s sexual harassment! She’s probably a minor. I’ll go to jail. I can see the headlines: “Gay man arrested for fondling woman in the park.” It’s not what you think! I’m not a creep! But I can’t not wipe my gastronomic disaster; I’d be a jerk! I’m just making it worse. “It’s alright,” she says, with a polite smile. No, it’s not! I want to scream. I just inconvenienced you and I don’t know how to make it up. I apologize again and slink back into my chair. Obviously, it’s my turn to be the Obnoxious Stranger Everyone Talks About on the Way Home.

“Apologize profusely and offer to pay for the dry cleaning,” says Bill in response to my query: what would Miss Manners do? Yes, I suppose that is the right thing to do. I did the apology bit. It sounds lame, and repeating it yet again won’t help. And it’s just a cotton top, it can be thrown in the wash. It seems awkward to offer to pay. Right? Or am I finding excuses? All through the play I’ll have those tomato seeds stuck there, taunting me. I wipe the sweat off my brow. So much for being cool.

Oh, look, they’re getting up. Are they offended? Are they taking a break? Moving their chairs? They just walk away. Well, at least I don’t have to see my tomato spurt victim. I catch my breath. “Man, that was as embarrassing as it gets.” I keep eating, more gingerly this time. The next tomato goes into my mouth, the whole thing. Fine. I can handle this. It’s over, move on.

Five minutes till curtain. Here they come. She’s wearing a long-sleeve T. “Shakespeare in the Park,” it says. Oh, good, she changed. I don’t have to feel bad that she’s uncomfortable or dirty. That was a nice way to handle it. Should I offer to pay for the new shirt? It’s a souvenir. They would have gotten the souvenir anyway, wouldn’t they? Or not. She glances at me briefly as she sits back down. I offer her a grimacing smile, as if to say, “I am so embarrassed I wish the ground would swallow me whole.” She and her dad continue talking. I focus my attention away.

“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Commonwealth Shakespeare Company’s production of The Taming of the Shrew. Please turn off your cell phones and refrain from flash photography.”

Showtime!

You’ve been together with your boyfriend for ten years, you’ve raised a son together for six. The whole country is in a frenzy over gay marriage. Your mom wants you to marry, your boyfriend is opposed to it, and your son says “Ewww.” And you? You’re afraid of jinxing the good thing you’ve got going by taking part in a ceremony that, at the end of the day, means nothing where you live.

Welcome to Dan Savage’s world.

I just finished reading The Commitment: Love, Sex, Marriage, and my Family. I liked this book most of all because it is an entertaining read. Like a good relationship or a satisfying conversation, Savage strikes the right balance between light banter, Heartfelt Sharing, and Deep Topics. One of the passages I found most moving, for example, is the following:

Being single visits a kind of constant, low-intensity misery on a person—at least on a person who does not want to be single. Coming home to an empty house, not having anyone to confide in, facing illnesses on your own—being alone hurts, but people can get used to it. But being in a long-term relationship does not spare you from all that day-to-day pain. It just banks it. Every day I’m with Terry [Miller, Savage's partner], every day I’m not alone, a little misery gets put into a savings account, where interest is compounded hourly. The day Terry dies, all the pain I avoided when I was with him will be paid out all at once; I will suffer a windfall of misery. I imagine the pain would literally feel like being torn in two. Maybe that’s what people mean when they talk about “one flesh”?

Savage, if you did not know, is not only the editor of Seattle’s Stranger who last week confronted Washington’s Chief Justice over the gay marriage ruling, but he is also a sex-advice columnist. As such, he is not afraid to tackle taboo subjects that make people on both sides of the gay marriage debate uncomfortable. After dispensing with the well-known fallacy that marriage is all about the children and thus should be reserved for straight couples (huh?), he proceeds to talk about monogamy:

Straight couples do not have to be monogamous to be married or married to be monogamous. Monogamy no more defines marriage than the presence of children does. Monogamy isn’t compulsory and its absence doesn’t invalidate a marriage…. Married straight couples are presumed to be monogamous until proven otherwise, of course, and that assumption serves as a powerful inducement to be (or appear to be) monogamous.

By promoting the erroneous notion that monogamy defines marriage, and that all gay couples who want to marry want to be monogamous, supporters of gay marriage are creating and, in some cases, attempting to enforce a double standard of their own—one that opponents of gay marriage can poke holes in pretty easily. Just as supporters of gay marriage can produce gay and lesbian couples with children, opponents of gay marriage won’t have to search for long before they find nonmonogamous gay couples among the thousands who have wed in Canada and Massachusetts….

He goes on to cite James Dobson’s specious arguments about the supposed perniciousness of gay marriages, and continues:

Before I argue with Dobson, I would like to agree with him on one point: Dobson is absolutely correct when he says that children are naturally conservative creatures—but not in the modern sense of the term “conservative.”….Children are conservative inasmuch as they require stability in order to feel secure and therefore prefer things to stay the same. They need ritual and familiarity….

If we want to promote stable, lasting relationships—particularly for all those naturally conservative kids out there—we shouldn’t encourage people to have unrealistic expectations about sex, love, and desire.

As if on cue, the same week that I read The Committment, The New York Times published an article on gay men stuck in straight marriages. The stories there are just heartbreaking: in most cases, rather than participating in the consensual non-monogamy of the kind that Dan Savage discusses, the men are outright cheating on their wives because they cannot conceive of a life with an open adult emotional attachment to another man.

Perhaps it’s naïve at this point to expect America to have a sane discussion about same-sex marriage any time soon, but I think both sides would do well to read Savage’s book and understand what a gay family actually feels like—beyond the moralistic debates, the political posturing, and the hate-filled rhetoric.

Apparently, Republicans entirely funded the Pennsylvania Green Party Senate campaign. Presumably the idea is to split the liberal vote so that Santorum can get re-elected.

If this doesn’t make the case for instant runoff voting, I don’t know what does.